Patterns

I watched the movie, Ink, tonight for the first time. I had been wanting to see it for a while and finally decided to go through with it. I'm very strange about movies sometimes. It can take me a great while before I'll finally set aside the time to pay attention to one. At first, I was very confused by it because it didn't seem to be following what was written as the description. Then, as it went along, it captured my attention until by the end I was focused. I even started crying. The reaction I have to most movies that make me cry is that I do not ever watch them again after that time. This one was different. It made me want to watch it again, even if I do end up crying the next time I watch it.

The movie also made me think. I won't go into too much detail so that anyone that hasn't seen it can't accuse me of spoiling anything but I will say that it made me think of patterns and how I perceive them. Not just in games but in the choices people make. It's something I am very aware of, in my own life especially. I am a pattern finder. I will take the end of a string and follow it back to it's beginning, working through each knot to see how it started. Each choice a person makes leads to another and another. What would your life be like if you had changed one simple choice? It could be VERY different if you had.

This is something I look at in those moments when I'm by myself. I look back on the choices I made and how each choice could have caused such a great variety in the outcome to where I am today. It's also why I can see so much good even when it seems like I'm surrounded by a mire, with the ghosts of my past trying to pull me down. I started to say that there is inherent good in every person, but that is a false statement. Some people, for whatever reason, simply aren't good. I cannot fathom it and it is not the topic of discussion for this evening, so I shall leave it be. Suffice it to say, I am NOT one of those people.

Back to patterns. I see patterns in everything. Even problems have a pattern. This is why almost any problem can be solved if you work on it enough. Some patterns are difficult to discern and some simply aren't for our comprehension. In those situations, we have to let that thread go to tangle itself elsewhere or we are likely to become absorbed somewhere we should not be.

Sometimes the only way I can relax is to pull up a game like Bejeweled or Peggle. These games consist of nothing but patterns. The problem with these games is that I do become absorbed and lose track of time. That is why I will not play them when I have other things that need to be accomplished. If I start the game with other things needing my attention, it simply will not get done.

Music is much the same way to me. Each song contains layers and the layers when combined, create a pattern. A pattern I can focus on and  allow my writing to come forth as it wishes, without the entanglements of my entire day prejudicing the writing. I think it is overkill to say that I love music that has several or more people singing different lyrics at the same time. I can listen to one song like this over and over, just to pick apart the different lines and it has the ability to carry me away much faster than many other songs.

Word searches often contain patterns. If you ever look closely, you can see where certain letters are grouped together and even make faces out of the letters. The same thing goes with popcorn ceilings. You can make all kinds of shapes out of the design of the ceiling. Sometimes I'll take M&M's and shape them into different patterns, just for the hell of it. Yes, I know this means I'm a very sad person, but it is the small things after all that keep me entertained.

And while I could probably talk about patterns all night and every place you could find them (which is literally limitless), I suppose I should end it before it becomes TLDR. I guess you could say one of my weaknesses is finding a pattern and it happens very often when I am bored that I will look around and start finding patterns in various objects or even creating patterns with things like paper clips or rubber bands, whatever is handy at the moment. Meh. Mark it down as yet another one of my quirks.  Good evening all and to all a good night. ;)